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Make your Mac’s desktop look like an iPad screen

Review Date: November, 1

Mac

A lot of us are so used to working with an iPad these days that sometimes we unconsciously try to swipe or tap the screens of our Macs. Did that ever happen to you? Today’s tip is not going to help you to solve this issue, i fact, it might make it even worse, but – there is a way to make the Finder into an iPad-like grid of iOS-style icons.

If you decide to take the risk – here is what you need to do.

First of all, you need to size-up the icons on the desktop. Click on the smiley face in the dock to go to the Finder, and then click on the View menu to select the View Options. Another way to do it is by pressing “Command+J” on your keyboard when in Finder. It is important to make sure that you have clicked right on the Desktop itself to get the right View Options window.

Boost up the icon size to 128 x 128, and then drag the Grid Spacing slider all the way to the right as well. This will make sense once you place your application and folder icons out onto the desktop. Also, select Sort by Snap to Grid to make sure you can place your icons in alignment with each other.

Now, go to the Finder and choose Preferences from the Finder menu. Uncheck Hard Drives and other volumes you may have on your Mac in the General tab in order to hide them from view.

Press “Option+Command+D” to hide the Dock from view if you want to have your Mac look like the screenshot above.

Next, go into your Applications and Home folder and make aliases of the things you’d like to have on your Desktop. Drag the icon out to the Desktop from the Applications Folder in Lion and wait a second. The icon will get larger and grow a little alias arrow to in the lower left.

Now, head into your Applications and Home folder and make aliases of the things you’d like on the Desktop. From the Applications Folder in Lion, at least, just drag the icon out to the Desktop and wait a second. The icon will enlarge and grow a little alias arrow in the lower left.
You can also just hit the Command-L on your keyboard with an icon selected for non-Application folders, like Movies and Pictures and such.

Okay, so now that you have them on the Desktop, drag them around in to an approximately iOS-like order and style. They should stay good in relation to each other and you’ll be able to make a fairly good iPad-like screen out of your Mac Finder.